Life after prosperity [Viaţă după prosperitate]

For decades, generation after generation of people in the ‘free’ Western world have been brainwashed to believe that, as long as they work hard, they can succed in life, and… have it all.

We’re entering the fifth year of Global Economic Crisis and the twelveth year of War on Terror (after two knock-out Septembers, in 2001 and 2008), yet there’s no sign that the world would ever be prosperous again.

After having spent so many years in schools and universities, young people in Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece or Romania find themselves to be part of a ‘lost generation’.



Not that the future looks much brighter for American, British, German or French youngsters. No matter how many newer and newer smartphones and other gadgets appear, the future looks dumber and dumber for everyone.

Our world – closely connected and flooded with often useless information – is nothing but a madhouse.

A giant suverillance society, where people are force-fed the dreams they should dream and the aspirations they should have. Apparently free, all of us are allowed to believe in whatever we want, and do what ever we want.



Anything is negotiable, everything is relative. There is no God, nor any supreme good. There are alternatives to everything one man considers to be an ultimate truth.

Everything but two dogmas are to be challenged. The moral superiority of democracy and capitalism shouldn’t be put into question. Dare to doubt these, and you’ll considered an extremist and gradually outcast, disenfranchised, liquidated!

Free (?!) education systems are still preparing people for a free (?!) world, where democratic values were supposed to guarantee the right to a prosperous life for everyone.



But that world is not more. So what are young people to believe? They have been learning about a world of peace, universal human values, and endless economic opportunities. No word about the afterlife, about what truly matters beyond all these fictions.

Everything they learned about was how to become the perfect cannon fodder for ideological and economic wars, to find the meaning of life in consumerism, lured by the fata morgana of prosperity.

Today, the chances of peace are deteriorating rapidly, and human rights are often abused within the temples of democracy that preach them…



As for the idols of prosperous economy, there have all “fell on their faces, shattered and broke into pieces.” The world is not a comfortable place to live in anymore.

There’s no fun, no delight, no pleasure, and no confidence in a marvelous future with major wars (Israel-Iran, Turkey-Cyprus, China-Japan), as well as famine, ecological and economic disasters looming ahead of us.

There must be life after prosperity, but how would that life be?! People (especially youngsters) are not ready to cope with this (not simply unfamiliar but outrightly) hostile new world.

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Coup d’état in Romania?! Or just an outburst of orange hysteria?[Lovitură de stat în România?! Sau doar o răbufnire de isterie portocalie?]

There are no tanks rolling down the streets of Bucharest, no one has been arrested or exiled, public gatherings are still taking place in the city centre. It’s Code Orange again – but not because of the political turmoil.

It’s the crazy weather once more – this time the scorching heat, not the heavy snowing and blizzards.

The ‘civilised world’ – the EU (especially Germany) + the USA & others – have expressed their concerns and preoccupation with the sad fact that their beloved orange hero of 2004 was wrongfully (so they claim) impeached a few days ago.

These high priests of democracy decry the fact that Băsescu could have been ‘executed’ by votes in the Romanian Parliament. But it’s all a hysterical reaction.

Votes are no bullets. These are the same votes that have recently installed an Islamist (albeit moderate) president in Egypt, the same that sent spirited Nicolas Sarkozy to early retirement, and the same that will probably oust Angela Merkel from power in 2013.

Happen what may – a bigger evil than Băsescu can always befall Romania; but this is no reason for not removing the current evil – I am siding with those that, on July 29, will vote YES to confirm his impeachment.

He has never been the honest fighter for democracy, the defender of an independent judiciary, the committed supporter of the rule of law, nor the reformist whom the foreign media kept portaying over the past decade.

He has been an authoritarian, abusive, antidemocratic, and arrogant president who could never put up with the imperfections of Romania’s Constitution.

As a matter of fact, back in 2004, he had promised that he wouldn’t be an neutral president, but a kind of “player-President.” And he surely kept his promise, and played aggressively.

Whether a man like him, considered to be a creation of the former Communist secret services, has already played all his trumps is difficult to say. Used to steering a 306-meter long oil tanker, Băsescu is skilled at turning adverse odds in his favour.

Exposing the plagiarism of the current Prime Minister only hastened his impeachment, although it wasn’t a decisive blow to his adversaries, that would assure the survival of his moribund orange regime.

The average voter doesn’t know what plagiarism is. But Băsescu may still have some aces left in his sleeves.

His orange supporters are enraged, desperately trying to convinge the Sublime Porte of 2012 – which is not Ottoman Istanbul anymore, but Brussels and Washington DC – that a coup d’état has taken place in Romania, thus a referendum would be illegitimate.

Some of their arguments are valid, yet so are many of those against Băsescu’s rule. He was not the enlightened reformist of democratic institutions often described by foreign fans and internal worshippers, but a rather constant saboteour of democracy.

Most of all, irrespective whether he did it constitutionally or not, he is a shameless liar – and his irresponsible lies amount to (if not even surpass) the gravity of high treason.

Out of his abundance of lies, it’s worth noting only those with catastrophical economic consequences. In the autumn of 2008, as the global economic crisis began breaking havoc elsewhere in the world, he said Romania would not be affected.

Even more so, he said the wages of teachers should be increased by 50% and accused the liberal Prime Minister of refusing to provide the funds for his irresponsible claims.

In the meantime, his orange clique (PDL) was promising a 6.5% percent economic growth for 2009. At the end of that year, the economy would contract by 7.2%.

A bit later, in January 2009, he said that Romania would not need an IMF loan. In May 2009, Romania loaned 20 billions euros from the IMF and the European Commission.

Where did the money go? In the coffers of foreign banks, in the pockets of ‘orange’ companies, but surely nowhere in the benefit of Romanians who refuse to bite the bullet.

Although prescribed as a life-or-death necessity, with obstinance and cynicism spit at the ‘lazy Romanians’, it is still arguable whether Romania was in a such desperate need of a bailout. Or was it more an experimetal medicine forced down our throats by Doctor Băsescu?

A year later, in May 2010, Băsescu subjected Romanians to a fierce austerity experiment – a 25% wage cut in the public sector, and a 5% VAT increase.

Some may argue that any of these are but inoffensive (to the degree they are ‘constitutional’) lies and a kind of inherent mistakes of democracy that can’t be punished in any democratic society.

What if they are not as innocent as we are told they are? Băsescu’s orange gang was one of cunning profiteers, thus most of his (and his regime’s) apparent mistakes look like sheer premeditated crimes.

A yesman of Washington DC, of Brussels, and of Berlin (where some of his most voiceful supporters are heard these days), he did nothing in favour of Romania – only in favour of the orange myriad of interests that he patronized.

He is a fake hero of democracy, an indecent patron of a corrupt regime whom most voters in Romania (hopefully – it’s risky to say anything more these days) don’t want as president anymore.

There’s no lack of easily corruptible yesmen in Romania, therefore no one in Washington DC, Brussels or Berlin should worry about Băsescu being thrown into the dustbin of history.  

Romanians should be as concerned about the democratic world’s crocodile tears for the fate of Romanian democracy as those cynics in the aforementioned capitals were worried when Băsescu was pushing this impoverished and abused nation through the steepest chasm of austerity ever seen in the EU.

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Cranes over Bucharest [Macarale peste Bucureşti]

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Romania’s (not Hungary’s!) capital – Bucharest, not Budapest! – hasn’t seen as many cranes (pics 1, 3, 5, 7) as those visible these days.

They are not as omnipresent as they were in the late 1980s, nevertheless, their presence can’t remain unnoticed, to locals and visitors alike.

As if there were no global economic crisis and Romania were immune to the turmoil in the Eurozone, cranes leave their mark of optimism on Bucharest’s skyline.

So it was during Nicolae Ceauşescu’s last days, so it was in Patriarh Noah’s time. People were building as if there would be a guaranteed tomorrow.

It’s true that, in Brussels, where cranes (pics 2, 4, 6, 8) stood a few years ago, a new building has risen to accommodate the newest EU institition.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) has got a nice home now, but whether the EU has a common foreign policy is still arguable.

The same applies for Bucharest. It may have more and more visible tower cranes, however, the city still lacks a coherent development strategy.

Were the cranes in Brussels and are those in Bucharest a true earnest of a prosperous future?! I bet Ceauşescu thought the same about his cranes in 1989…

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

[EN] Worth trying in the UK / [RO] Merită încercat în UK (22)

[EN] It is often said – and for good reasons – that Great Britain is an ‘expensive country’.

[RO] Se spune adesea – şi pentru motive întemeiate – că Marea Britanie este ‘o ţară scumpă’.

[EN] In pounds (GBP), all things seem to cost more than in most other EU countries.

[RO] În lire (GBP), toate lucrurile par să coste mai mult decât în cele mai multe ţări UE.

[EN] That’s why, before the current economic crisis, many Brits dreamed of spending their retirement years in France, Spain, Portugal or Cyprus…

[RO] De aceea, înaintea actualei crize economice, mulţi britanici visau să îşi petreacă anii de pensiei în Franţa, Spania, Portugalia sau Cipru...

[EN] However, what exacly is expensive in UK should be debated beyond a blog post.

[RO] Totuşi, ce anume este scump în UK ar trebui dezbătut dincolo de o postare pe blog.

[EN] In my view, truly expensive are those things indispensable – such as rents, gas and electricity bills, insurances, public transport etc…

[RO] În opinia mea, cu adevărat scumpe sunt acele lucruri indispensabile – precum chiriile, facturile de gaz şi electricitate, asigurările, transportul public etc…

[EN] Clothing and other daily necessary items can be bought at reasonable prices from places like this Inverness Street Market, in Camden Town, in the north of London.

[RO] Îmbrăcăminte şi alte obiecte necesare zilnic pot fi cumpărate la preţuri rezonabile din locuri precum această Inverness Street Market, în Camden Town, în nordul Londrei.

[EN] Thanking my reader C.L. for the pics, I invite anyone to visit this not as posh as Oxford Street (but surely not so expensive!) part of London.

[RO] Mulţumind cititoarei mele C.L. pentru poze, invit pe oricine să viziteze această parte nu-la-fel de fiţoasă-ca Oxford Street (dar sigur nu chiar aşa scumpă!) a Londrei.

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Will the Eurozone crack? [Va crăpa Eurozona?]

More than three years after the Wall Street Crash of 2008, the unthinkable demise of the euro and the break-up of the Eurozone has (apparently) become plausible.

It’s getting crystal clear even to the most fanatic euroenthusiasts that any imminent economic cataclysm cannot be blamed on convenient scapegoats anymore.

The lazy Greeks, the irresponsible governments in Eurozone weak links countries (PIIGS), along with greedy bankers everywhere may have played relatively secondary roles in influencing the destiny of the EMU.

Nevertheless, the fate of the European currency has never been – nor is it in these very days of turmoil – in the hands of less important actors like the above.

The devil lies in the details of EU treaties and especially in the chain of misdeeds committed by the political leaders of Europe, whether acting unilaterally, from Berlin, Paris or Rome, or together, from Brussels.

Hardly could the roots of the current crisis be located in Frankfurt, as the ECB has seldom had its hands united by the heads of state and government reunited in the Council of the Union.

More and more independent economists show that the mess engulfing the EU and threatening to blow up the global economy has systemic causes.

The EMU is on the brink of disaster because it lacks several fundamental premises of an efficient monetary union; it is made up of an econimic ‘giant’ (Germany) with 16 ‘feet of clay’ of various strengths from stronger (France) and weaker (Italy) muscles to negligible appendices (Estonia).

The ECB could be reasonably functioning as a central bank (if allowed to act do so), yet there is no effective equivalent of a national Treasury (Ministry of Finances) or Government in Brussels.

For decades, EU leaders have been deploring the lack of a common defence policy (greatly compensated by NATO) or of a common energy policy (whose absence contributes to the fact that Europeans are often ‘energy hostages’ of Russia).

It was fashionable to complain about these issues, however, none was as divisive and able to threaten the survival of the EU as the other skeleton that the current crisis took out of the Union’s closet – there is no common fiscal policy of the EMU.

In its absence, sooner or later, the Eurozone would be doomed to crack, like some analysts anticipated in the late 1990s, if not even longer before, around the dawn of this project.

The flaws of the EMU were known from the very beginning but swept under a carpet of great expectations about increased common prosperity.

For a while, the illusion worked. After the first months of wariness, when many Europeans in euro countries were shocked by price hikes, almost everyone grew accustomed with a stable currency, no need for exchange rates, low inflation and bearable interest rates.

The Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese and others had access to cheap credit, while their tourist industries cashed in strong euros, instead of weak drachmas, pesetas or escudos.

In the meantime, the euro was weaker than how the Deutsche Mark would have probably been in the 2000s, enabling Germany to be biggest world exporter in 2007, ahead of China.

The success story seemed complete, and many warnings (like the ones about Italy being unfit for EMU membership (+ here, here, here) – see the pics*** illustrating this article!) were bluntly dismissed as nonsensical soothsaying.

Actually, there’s growing evidence that it was well-known to the architects of the euro that the Eurosystem was ill conceived from the start.

This didn’t prevent them from taking a huge gamble on the hope that a severe crisis (like the one the world has endured since 2008) would eventually help establish a “a more perfect union,” like the Constitution of the USA aimed in 1787.

Is this imperfect monetary union perfectible? Are the 17 euro countries willing to take upon themselves the full political cost of making the EMU truly functional?

And could giving up more of one country’s sovereignty guarantee anything for the EU’s citizens (“we the people,” if we were to quote the US Constitution again), apart from helping save the banking system from collapse?

Will a ‘full fiscal union’ work better than the current ailing EMU? The Eurosystem would probably run smoothly, yet the imbalances between the 17 economies would remain as grave as they are today, if not even worsen.

Smothering public deficits from the cradle would not grant choices of more responsible political leaders to European voters; it would merely ignite more vicious political battles and maybe even ‘class conflict’ within nations.

And, riskier than anything else, wouldn’t this ‘EU Treasury’ remain as unaccountable to European citizens as other EU institutions and leaders that created the current ‘euro-mess’ have always been?

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

*** NOTE: Simon Tilford, from the Center for European Reform (London based think-tank), warned that “if Italy fails to improve its competitiveness, it will eventually have to leave the Eurozone” (2006).

Există o autentică fascinaţie românească pentru îmbrăcămintea britanică? [Is there an authentic Romanian fascination with British clothing?!]

Cu mulţi ani în urmă, în copilărie, am pus la păstrare în memorie o expresie care desemna calitatea, durabilitatea şi chiar eleganţa – ‘stofă englezească’ (iată un exemplu).

Treptat, îmi pare că expresia a ajuns să nu se mai refere exclusiv la textile şi îmbrăcăminte, ci să fie o marcă (un brand) a(l) calităţii şi a(l) lucrului bine făcut (vezi aici sau aici).

Este unul dintre acele lucruri – or fi multe, puţine?! – pentru care britanicii ar putea să fie mândri (nu că le-o trebui prea mult să se umfle în pene :-) că le construieşte o imagine relativ bună în ochii românilor.

Să nu uităm faptul că sintagma, înfiptă bine în vocabularul limbii române, precede deceniile comuniste când ajunseseră rarităţi hainele din stofă (şi calitate) englezească.

Chiar şi eu m-am simţit elegant şi mândru de un sacou din astfel de stofă englezească, cu mult înainte de a şti despre şi de a fi un fan (mă rog, cât pot fi eu de ‘fan’ :-) a unui brand britanic: Marks & Spencer.

Într-o Românie comunistă, precum aceea în care am deschis eu ochii şi unde opţiunile vestimentare erau destul de limitate, ceva ‘made in UK’ părea foarte atrăgător.

Sau ieşit din comun(ism), sau chiar subversiv un picuţ. Sau, cum am zice în zilele noastre, era… cool. Poate chiar funcţiona ca un surogat de libertate.

Pentru mulţi, faptul că puneau mâna pe vreo pereche de blugi (blue jeans), sau altceva făcut (‘made in…’) în lumea liberă le era suficient, ca să se considere disidenţi, cumva eliberaţi şi resemnaţi cu celelalte realităţi zilnice.

Ce nevoie să mai ai de libertatea cuvântului sau libertate de conştiinţă? Puţini mai aveau cuvânt (azi şi mai puţini), iar conştiinţă – nici atâţia cât ceilalţi puţini…

Multora le era destul dacă puteau ciupi frânturi de libertate vestimentară. Cei care puteau ciupi, au ajuns şmecheri.

Mulţi dintre ceilalţi au ajuns buni meseriaşi, profesori, doctori, ingineri etc – pentru că nu aveau cum să iasă în evidenţă decât prin lucrul bine făcut de ei înşişi, nu prin ceva de purtat, care putea fi mai întâi cumpărat, apoi etalat.

Pe atunci, moda dezirabilă era să fii mai toată ziua prins într-o uniformă: de şoim al patriei, de pionier, de vânzător, de muncitor, de miliţian, de soldat, de membru al gărzilor patriotice sau de… artist în Cântarea României.

Parcă şi în afara contextelor oficiale, tot un soi de uniformă era şi îmbrăcămintea aşa-zis civilă – cu prea mici variaţii, anostă, uneori nu prea comodă, adesea lipsită de calitate.

La două decenii după ce am sărit pârleazul din raiul comunist, or fi încă destui care să se îmbrace uniform, cu având aparent diverse, dar în realitate foarte sărace alegeri de haine ‘made in China’.

Totuşi, există mult mai multe opţiuni, precum aceste magazine de haine englezeşti, adesea la mâna a doua (second hand), aflate cu precădere în Transilvania***, cu o singură excepţie (poza 7) – Bacău (unde am mai constatat urme britanice :-)

Dar nici stofele englezeşti par să nu aibă succes în vremurile noastre de criză, căci o prăvălie “de haine engleze”din Arad (poza 1, septembrie 2010) avea să devină “magazin chinezesc” (poza 8, septembrie 2011).

*** NOTĂ: Imaginile nelocalizate în articol au fost surprinse, în luna mai 2011, în oraşele Oradea [2], Satu Mare [3], Baia Mare [4], Odorheiu Secuiesc [5] şi Miercurea Ciuc [6].

[Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la/For all the posts on this blog go to: Contents/Cuprins]